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I've never cared for the souped up screw on or mega stake on tubes, however I believe Caspian solved the problem for good with their integral machined on tube that is actualy part of the frame......one of the best, most common sense changes to the original design ever made.

I think p99shooter said it much better than I did, in a way that doesn't sound like a religious hate rant;
"I'm a spiritual person, but also a scientist by training. I personally dislike it any time religion or philosophy is applied to things that are strictly based on empiricism.
For example, diets. The metabolism of the human body is pretty well known, and science has shown us what is good to eat and what is not. Now there are diets that say we should eat this and not eat that based on some philosophical bent.
I think that applying spirituality to human practices is our nature, just as it's our nature to anthropromorphize animals or inanimate objects. Even Einstein, a deeply spiritual person, did this when trying to disprove quantum mechanics."
Thanks p99shooter.

I hope I don't offend anyone here because I love this site and think Brian is great, but I need to get this of my chest.
All the psuedo-spiritual/mental-accent eastern philosophy just leaves me cold, I am a very spiritualy and mentaly aware person who practices inward examination and meditation through my own particular religion of Christianity, but I find "zen" in shooting sports to be quite rediculas despite the fact that some of the principals used are proven universal techniques.
Once again I hope no one takes this personaly and I appologize if I have offended anyone as I know not all people agree with my personal views/beliefs either.
Thanks.

Just shot with a guy this month who ordered a large amount of re-mfg ammo, same deal, the whole lot he got was bad, the bullets were barely seated in the cases and the a.o.l. was so long they wouldn't feed, he didn't even look at them before the match and found out his first stage.

I'm still fairly new too, only shot a handfull of casual "practice" matches to date, but I was actualy way better my first match than I thought I was going to be, the R.O. was actualy nice enough to compliment me several times on shot placement.
My second match was where I got all my screw-ups out of the way, my head was so far up my arse I coulsdn't see daylight! I was over confident from my first good performance and tried to go to fast, didn't pay attention to details, totaly embarrased buy the end of the day.
I realized to focus on accuracy, and speed will come naturaly, if you focus on speed, you'll never be as accurate or as fast as you want to be.
Someone in IDPA once said "smooth is fast and fast is smooth".

Personaly I don't see the need for it, but maybe I'm missing something here. Brownells and midway do seem to have a lot of niche fixtures I've never considered worth the price they charge when standard machinist vices and clamps work just as good.

There's actualy a well known 'smith out there I saw in a magazine about a year ago working on a 1-piece mainspring housing/grip safety filler piece for people who don't want a grip safety, but as usual lawyers are being consulted, and who knows if it will ever be marketed to the public, no matter how popular it would be.

"stopped pinning many years ago-just file down the tang on the inside of the grip safety-same effect without the pin"
Me too, I just file the tang down to what would be best reffered to as a "hair trigger grip safety", that way it is still technicaly funcional depending on what rules apply, but it dissengages the second my hand touches it, I also file back the mainspring housing stop allowing the safety to stick as far out as possible ensuring positive dissengament.

Harmon;
Thanks for the reply, I was worried that I'd be real iffy with 4.8, mine's through a 1911 though.
The Hogdon re-loading manual says 4.9 should make 900 fps, but manuals never seem to agree with real world numbers.

A loose firing pin stop/extractor retainer that lets the extractor move to much can also be a problem, I've had to replace them along with the extractor before.
The old school field test for extractor tension is to remove the slide, and manualy insert a round from below into the extractor, it should move only slightly and should not produce much noticable resistance.
For the ejector you'll need a high quality 1/8 punch that won't bend or break knocking out the retaining pin.
good luck.